Appreciating a piece of artnot just for the art itself but the story of the artist------------------------------------------Bead your dream and live creative life!

Background.

I am 23 years old from San Francisco, California with tons of inspiration and opportunities surrounding me. Before beading, my favorite hobby would be gaming. Counter strike, Super Smash Brothers, and Maple story were among my favorite. Although I spent quite a lot of time on the computer, once I was introduced to beading, all my gaming time quickly vanished and was consumed by hours in my room making projects the second I got back from school.

How I started beading.

I remember making bead patterns as a kid during summer camps and such. I made the usual star patterns that just followed the outlines with different colors. Nothing fancy like Mario stars or faces. One day I was at a milk tea shop, and I saw a Charmander, Pikachu, and Squirtle made out of beads sitting at the top of a cabinet. My girlfriendat the time loves pokemon and I knew those would be the coolest little gifts that I could make for her and try to make other things. The next day I went on to Amazon, found a bucket of 22,000 perler beads, and the journey started.

Growing my “business”.

As I started making more and more little keychains and showing them off on my Facebook, I thought it would be a fun idea to start selling these as a fundraiser for my dragonboat team, SF Blazing Dragons. Shoutout to the coolest team out there! So I started advertising little keychains and taking requests for certain characters and I raised a total of $80 for my team. Not a lot, but I was happy with that amount considering it was an individual fundraiser. I quickly saw there was a niche little market but I wasn’t too big on selling online yet. I wanted to become more creative.

My first Instagram name was Perler_crafts. But that quickly changed when I wanted the account to be more personal. It became @Christoperler. Christopher + Perler. I started slow, just posting little things here and there, not getting much of a following, but I didn’t mind. When I saw @Nickgalilei make a Goku portrait, I thought, wow I need to make one for myself. Made it, was happy with it, wanted to do more. So I sat down on a computer, opened my program, and started designing my first ever original piece, Yugi. When people hear program, they usually think about a converter from picture to pixels. The program I used was basically like drawing. Placing one pixel at a time and correcting it ten thousand more times. It took roughly 3-4 hours, but the final result was so satisfying. I quickly started to make more, such as Naruto, Luffy, Baymax, and Aang. These custom original portraits were the turning point in my Instagram journey. A competition hosted by some awesome beaders, @perler_purrs, @tarawashere88, @nickgalilei, @zomberic_art, @voxelperlers, and @ig_retro4everything_, posted my Aang photo and I got an awesome shoutout!

Soon after making all those portraits, I started to get a little tired of making them because they took a long time to design, bead, then iron. I made a red shell and a green shell that I saw online, but there was no blue shell. So I designed a blue shell, and thought to myself, why don’t I try to make something different with these. I’ll use the same turtle shell, but add a water cannon to make it seem like the pokemon Blastoise. It was the perfect idea that launched my whole custom shell series that got me such a huge following. The fun part about this series, was everything that was made, was suggested by someone commenting what I should make next. I loved to engage with my followers and involve them in my projects.

After using perler for a long time, I was introduced to Artkal beads. Now many would say the worst part about this hobby is the ironing, or knocking over your finished piece, but I think being limited by just color selection can be much worse. Thankfully, Artkal saw the need for more colors and shades to allow all artists to be open with their ideas and not be restricted by the basic colors of most bead companies.

My appreciation.

This was the hobby that I never knew I needed. I was struggling to find something to motivate me, to give me something to look forward to. The more I progressed in my creativity and Instagram, I knew this was the perfect outlet to dedicate my time to. Beading gave me an outlet to be comfortable being alone and be happy. Even though I was physically alone, people would take interest in what I was doing and as how my business was, what kind of project I will make next, and just generally be very happy that I’m doing something I love.To all the wonderful people who supported me, inspired me, pushed me to create bigger and better things, or simply just ordered something from me, I say thank you very much. You all have impacted my life in such a big way and I will never forget about it.